Why three? A two-level system with four mutually unbiased questions

Abstract

Two sharp yes/no questions are mutually unbiased if and only if their involutions anticommute. A set of unbiased questions is therefore a Clifford algebra, whose maximal size is odd, meaning four anticommuting questions typically imply a fifth: the two-level systems of real, complex and quaternionic quantum theory allow two, three and five questions, while four is skipped. Without this operator product restriction, a two-level system with four unbiased questions exists as the four-dimensional Bloch ball, the hyperbit. The single-system postulates that pick out the Jordan state spaces allow such a model, and only energy observability rules it out. We show what it lacks, and realise it inside two qubits: its Kirkwood-Dirac imaginary parts are hidden $\mathfrak{so}(4)$ generators, its composites allow entanglement but no interaction, and its 24-cell of states stays Spekkens preparation contextual down to depolarising strength $2/3$. In fermionic terms, the four questions are the Majorana operators of two modes while the fifth is parity: the four-question system is therefore the sector removed by parity superselection.